A situation which may be encountered from time to time is where a plurality of bodies which are supplied in a disordered or random fashion have to be put into an orderly and aligned condition so that for example a further processing operation can be carried out thereon in a rational manner. The bodies involved for example may be hollow bodies of plastic material such as bottles, cups, beakers or the like, which are to be so ordered and aligned that, after passing through the apparatus for converting them from a disordered condition into an orderly condition, they are passed out of the apparatus disposed in a row one behind the other. In that respect the arrangement of the bodies, in regard to the positions of the ends thereof, relative to the direction of conveying movement is frequently random so that in the majority of cases an additional aligning operation also has to be carried out, in which those bodies which are in positions that are not suitable for subsequent handling and possible treatment are pivoted into a new position so that thereafter all bodies which are transported in a row are in a unitary position, including in regard to the positioning of the ends of the bodies.
Apparatuses for aligning bodies which are supplied in a disordered or random condition have to be suited to the dimensions and configuration of the respective bodies to be passed through the apparatus. At the present time apparatuses for that operation suffer from the disadvantage that, for that purpose, they use shaped members, that is to say some components which, when making a change from one series of bodies to another series of bodies of a different configuration and/or of different dimensions, have to be exchanged or adjusted, which is a time-consuming operation. That results in a considerable reduction in the level of productivity of such apparatuses. In addition in many cases their throughput capacity is anyway comparatively low.